Normal human beings are nearly unable to remember a time when a foreigner won a major tournament in Starcraft (it was Ilyes ‚Stephano‘ Satouri in 2012). All big events this year were won by Koreans, but only two of them won more than once.

Besides the lack of foreign champions, there has been a lack of major tournaments this year. We counted all events with more than 50,000 dollar prize money. 9 out of the 13 tournaments displayed belong to Blizzard World Championship Series – which featured nine different winners.

Zest and Classic: Surprising winners at GSL

In Korea, the motherland of Starcraft, it was time for some newcomers. Both [zest] and [classic (kdw)] surely were not among the huge favourites to win the Global Starcraft League this year. Now they could win the Global Finals and crown themselves as World Champions, especially [zest] who also won the KeSPA Cup lately. [innovation] is one of the favourites for this biggest event of the year as well. He seems to be back in shape after not qualifying for GSL Season 1 and being eliminated in the group stage of Season 2.

MC and MMA take over Europe

Europe is still the beloved battleground of [mc] and [mma]. [mc] was runner-up of WCS Europe twice before winning the trophy for the first time this year. [mma] succeeded for the second time – he has a second and a third place in his history as well. [stardust] however is one of the unexpected WCS-champions. But since his move to Switzerland he is getting more and more succesful especially in european tournaments.

Red Bull Bomber wins twice

America had its surprising winner as well: [pigbaby]. The 22-year-old has no big wins in his career history besides WCS this year. But he was able to repeat his strong performance in the last season of the year and advanced to the playoffs again. But there he was beaten by [bomber]. The Red Bull sponsored athlete didn’t just win WCS America but also Red Bull Battlegrounds: Washington – one of the few non-WCS-events with a huge prize pool this year. The first season of WCS America was won by [hyun] however who reached the semifinals in both of the following seasons and thus is one of the best players of WCS this year.

sOs is World Champion of both WCS and IEM

One of these nine players may win the WCS Global Finals at the end of November and become World Champion, like [sos] did last year. In 2014 he didn’t play much of a role in WCS. He was in the playoffs once and dropped out in group stages twice. But [sos] won the IEM World Championship in March – the first big event of the year.

The last champion of the year is [jaedong] who often dropped out early or unexpected, especially in WCS, but who also triumphed at the World E-Sport Championship in September against [snute]. It was by the way the only tournament in which a foreigner reached the Grand Final. In every other tournament Koreans at least held ranks 1 to 4.